The Great Mortality : An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time [Hardcover]

John Kelly (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0060006927 | ISBN-13: 978-0060006921 | Publication Date: February 1, 2005 | Edition: First edition/Full number line

In October 1347, at about the start of the month, twelve Genoese galleys put in to the port of Messina [Italy].

So begins, in almost fairy-tale fashion, a contemporary account of the worst natural disaster in European history -- what we call the Black Death, and what the generation who lived through it called la moria grandissima: "the great mortality." The medieval plague, however, was more than just a European catastrophe. From the bustling ports along the China Sea to the fishing villages of coastal Greenland, almost no area of Eurasia escaped the wrath of the medieval pestilence. And along with people died dogs, cats, chickens, sheep, cattle, and camels. For a brief moment in the middle of the fourteenth century, the words of Genesis 7:21 seemed about to be realized: "All flesh died that moved upon the earth."

THE GREAT MORTALITY is John Kelly's compelling narrative account of the medieval plague, from its beginnings on the desolate, windswept steppes of Central Asia to its journey through the teeming cities of Europe. "This is the end of the world," wrote a bootblack of the pestilence's arrival in his native Siena. THE GREAT MORTALITY paints a vivid picture of what the end of the world looked like, circa 1348 and 1349: bodies packed like "lasagna" in municipal plague pits, collection carts winding through the streets early in the morning to pick up the dead, desperate crowds crouched over municipal latrines inhaling noxious fumes in hopes of inoculating themselves against the plague, children abandoning infected parents -- and parents, infected children. THE GREAT MORTALITY also looks at new theories about the cause of the plague and takes into account why some scientists and historians believe that the Black Death was an outbreak not of bubonic plague, but of another infectious illness -- perhaps anthrax or a disease like Ebola.

Interweaving a modern scientific methodical analysis with an evocative portrait of medieval medicine, superstition, and bigotry, THE GREAT MORTALITY achieves an air of immediacy, authenticity, and intimacy never before seen in literature on the plague. Drawing on the latest research, it unwraps the mystery that shrouds the disease and offers a new and fascinating look into the complex forces that went into the making of the Black Death.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A book chronicling one of the worst human disasters in recorded history really has no business being entertaining. But John Kelly's The Great Mortality is a page-turner despite its grim subject matter and graphic detail. Credit Kelly's animated prose and uncanny ability to drop his reader smack in the middle of the 14th century, as a heretofore unknown menace stalks Eurasia from "from the China Sea to the sleepy fishing villages of coastal Portugal [producing] suffering and death on a scale that, even after two world wars and twenty-seven million AIDS deaths worldwide, remains astonishing." Take Kelly's vivid description of London in the fall of 1348: "A nighttime walk across Medieval London would probably take only twenty minutes or so, but traversing the daytime city was a different matter.... Imagine a shopping mall where everyone shouts, no one washes, front teeth are uncommon and the shopping music is provided by the slaughterhouse up the road." Yikes, and that's before just about everything with a pulse starts dying and piling up in the streets, reducing the population of Europe by anywhere from a third to 60 percent in a few short years. In addition to taking readers on a walking tour through plague-ravaged Europe, Kelly heaps on the ancillary information and every last bit of it is captivating. We get a thorough breakdown of the three types of plagues that prey on humans; a detailed account of how the plague traveled from nation to nation (initially by boat via flea-infested rats); how floods (and the appalling hygiene of medieval people) made Europe so susceptible to the disease; how the plague triggered a new social hierarchy favoring women and the proletariat but also sparked vicious anti-Semitism; and especially, how the plague forever changed the way people viewed the church. Engrossing, accessible, and brimming with first-hand accounts drawn from the Middle Ages, The Great Mortality illuminates and inspires. History just doesn't get better than that. --Kim Hughes

From Publishers Weekly

The Black Death raced across Europe from the 1340s to the early 1350s, killing a third of the population. Drawing on recent research as well as firsthand accounts, veteran author Kelly (Three on the Edge, etc.) describes how infected rats, brought by Genoese trading ships returning from the East and docked in Sicily, carried fleas that spread the disease when they bit humans. Two types of plague seem to have predominated: bubonic plague, characterized by swollen lymph nodes and the bubo, a type of boil; and pneumonic plague, characterized by lung infection and spitting blood. Those stricken with plague died quickly. Survivors often attempted to flee, but the plague was so widespread that there was virtually no escape from infection. Kelly recounts the varied reactions to the plague. The citizens of Venice, for example, forged a civic response to the crisis, while Avignon fell apart. The author details the emergence of Flagellants, unruly gangs who believed the plague was a punishment from God and roamed the countryside flogging themselves as a penance. Rounding up and burning Jews, whom they blamed for the plague, the Flagellants also sparked widespread anti-Semitism. This is an excellent overview, accessible and engrossing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First edition/Full number line edition (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060006927
• ISBN-13: 978-0060006921
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (85 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #579,864 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Kelly is an author and indepedent scholar now specializing in the intersection of European history with health, human behavior, and science, all of which were his previous subjects. His The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time, published by HarperCollins in 2005 (paperback, 2006), "conveys in excruciating but necessary detail a powerful sense of just how terribly Europe suffered," said Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post, while The New York Times's Michiko Kakutani said, "John Kelly gives the reader a ferocious, pictorial account of the horrible ravages of [the] plague."
Kelly is at work now on The Graves Were Walking: The Great Irish Famine and the Failure of British Nation-Building, for Henry Holt, a vivid, character-driven history of the devastation of mid-19th century Ireland, drawing on never-before-published material and presenting an entirely new thesis, with significant resonance to U.S. domestic and international events today. His 1999 Three on The Edge: The Stories of Ordinary American Families In Search of a Medical Miracle (Bantam) was called, by Publishers Weekly, "A compelling, touching account, rendered without sentiment by an expert storyteller."
Kelly lives in Manhattan and Berkshire County, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Sprawling Circumstances of the Black Plague, April 19, 2005

By 

Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Mortality : An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (Hardcover)

In this book exploring the times and the details of the Black Plague, John Kelly introduces the lay reader to the pestilence that wiped out up to sixty percent of some of Europe's most bustling cities. From Messina to Florence to Paris to London - and all the cities and towns between and around them, the populace could not stop the spread of this particularly virulent form of Yersinia pestis, whether they sought laws to restrict it or simply chose to ignore it. The book provides insights into some of the potential causes of why this bout of plague is unequaled in history: sanitation, specific rodent populations (including that of the tarabagan of the Russian steppes), societal traditions, a burgeoning "global" economy, warfare, bacteriology, and other theories. The epidemiology of the disease and the forms it takes, from the "gurgling" bubos of bubonic plague to the respiratory infection that sounds frighteningly close to the hemorrhagic fevers, make for fascinating, if gruesome, reading.

The author recreates the events of individuals who succumbed to Y. pestis through written documentation and his own imagination. For an example, he writes "The headstone tells us only enough to suggest the following scenario . . . " He then continues for a page and a half to describe in detail the final days of a husband and wife. I found the method to make the plague more "intimate" through invented details somewhat troubling, although readers will find these passages the most compelling because of their focus on the individual. The book can occasionally be repetitive, stating in one chapter what was stated earlier. The strength of this historical account - and what readers will remember most about it - is the vivid depiction of medieval life as it circles around, and then centers on, the plague itself. The psychological damage beyond the physical loss is poignantly illustrated on almost every page.

The author outlines not only the complex forces at work during the plague, but also the far-reaching consequences of it, both in the changes it wrought more or less immediately in Europe and in our approach to disease today. Readers intrigued by the societal and environmental elements of a pandemic will find this history rich with detail and complexity.

62 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping And Ghastly Tale, February 24, 2005

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Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Mortality : An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (Hardcover)

John Kelly has produced a nasty, fascinating tale with The Great Mortality, as he covers the history of the Black Death (ca. 1347-1352) tour of Europe. One should not make the mistake of reading this book over lunch as the descriptions are accurately nauseating in their thoroughness. At times, a hint of monotony does creep into the tale as each country's encounters with the swiftly spreading disease is told. The tale does not vary much and is most interesting in the earlier chapters with the diseases first encounters with Europe in Italy. The book's strengths are its discussion of recent scholarship on both the origin and the nature of the plague. It is a gripping story of a most horrific and unimaginable event.

41 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, but lacking in structure and focus, May 27, 2005

By 

J. N. Mohlman (Barrington, RI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Great Mortality : An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (Hardcover)

At it's best, John Kelly's "The Great Mortality" is a gripping, in your face look at the Black Death that began in 1348. Using a host of primary sources he draws the reader into what feels like a firsthand account of those grim days, all while remaining grounded in modern science and history. Unfortunately, at its worst it is a meandering account full of poorly identified speculation that fails to effectively straddle history and science. The result is an engaging, but ultimately uneven account that while worth reading fails to live up to its potential.

Kelly's introduction immediately reveals some of these flaws. He offers an overview of how the plague arose in nature, how it burst out of its generally isolated ecological niche, and its impact on society and history. There is much to commend this introduction, as it quite nicely captures the evolution of a pseudo-global economy, and its impact on the spread of the disease. He also offers some interesting insight into where plague fits in the natural order, and how it made the jump from rodents to humans. However, Kelly also tends to pass off assumptions of human behavior as fact, and frequently takes contemporary sources at face value, a cardinal sin in a history, but particularly when dealing with an era as steeped in superstition as the Middle Ages. Moreover, a problem that plagues (no pun intended) "The Great Mortality" is that Kelly never seems quite sure if he wants to be primarily a historian or a scientist. The result is a flirting with scientific theory that never quite meets expectations, and leaves the reader frustrated. The flip side of the coin is a an over reliance on historical recreations where simple reference to the available source material would have been more effective, simpler and more academically honest.

These same problems continue to crop up throughout "The Great Mortality" but so do the positives. In particular, Kelly does an excellent job of placing the impact of the plague within the context of societal and demographic change that so shaped the Renaissance and Reformation. Most notably, he quite adeptly explores how the plague broke Europe out of a population/resource deadlock and drove innovation and the rise of European global dominance. He quite rightly posits that in the absence of the plague and subsequent waves of disease could have left Europe as a cultural and economic backwater struggling to scrape out an existence on over-utilized land, much like the present day Third World. However, he fails to extrapolate this impact to the rest of the world. He makes several references to the tremendous death toll in China and India, and their role in the spread of the disease, but fails to give them equal consideration. To a point, this is an unfair complaint as Kelly makes it clear he is focusing on the European Black Death. However, his decision to paint (and quite correctly) a picture of a global community means he has to take a global view, and the failure to offer even a cursory summary of the plague in the East feels like unfinished business.
Ultimately, "The Great Mortality" provides a nice introduction to the Black Death, although if you are a real history buff you may find yourself (like me) looking for more rigorous follow up volumes. At it's best, "The Great Mortality" offers a sterling view of the global implications of a pandemic, including sociological, economic, political and philosophical. Unfortunately, this is often offset by unfinished thoughts and poorly explained details. Kelly has produced an interesting, easy to read volume, and I would advise anyone with an interest in the period to check it out, but it could have been more.

Jake Mohlman